


A Matter of Trust (You Are So Grounded For Your Afterlife, Mister!)

by Kentucky_Wallflower



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Family, Family Bonding, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Identity Reveal, Mother-Son Relationship, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-23 13:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14935266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kentucky_Wallflower/pseuds/Kentucky_Wallflower
Summary: While investigating their missing inventions, Maddie discovers the truth about her son and Danny Phantom. Not quite sure how to react, she does the only logical thing a mother can do.***AKA: The one where Danny Fenton keeps getting grounded and can't seem to figure out why.





	1. Missing Invensions and New Discoveries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PlotWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlotWitch/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Phantom Files](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14752653) by [ChaosDragon (PlotWitch)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlotWitch/pseuds/ChaosDragon), [PlotWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlotWitch/pseuds/PlotWitch). 



> I've always loved the show, and I've been reading Danny Phantom fanfiction for years, but this is my first time ever taking a try at writing something for the phandom. So please, give me your feedback on this little piece and let me know what you thought. I hope I portrayed everyone in character, because I really tried my best not to be too ooc with Maddie or Danny. 
> 
> Also, disclaimer warnings:
> 
> A) I take no credit for the show, Danny Phantom, or it's characters in anyway. This is simply a fan-work, and it is just for fun. 
> 
> B) This first chapter is mostly description for story building purposes. There will be more dialogue in future chapters, I promise. 
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are what inspire me to keep writing for you guys. So leave a comment, cause I'd love to talk! :D 
> 
> Promt Fic: "Maddie stumbles across Danny’s secret, and the repercussions are astounding. She doesn’t know how to tell him, so instead she starts finding reasons to keep him grounded, so that he can't damage the town anymore. She doesn’t trust him, no matter that she doesn’t know how she can't. But when a big old nasty comes to town Danny begins to understand what Maddie is doing, and why, and finally just gets fed up with it and reveals it all to both parents so that he can save amity park." --PlotQueen

She and Jack had always known that their inventions had been disappearing ever since the ghost portal started working, just as how they had been aware from day one that that putrid piece of ectoplasm called Phantom had been using them in his so-called heroics—which were all a part of his evil scheming no doubt. Sure, she and Jack had tried finding out how the weapons began disappearing, who was taking them, and most importantly how Phantom was getting his filthy hands on them.

  
First, they had tried installing cameras in the lab, at the top of the stairs, and two angled directly at the ghost portal. They were sure that they would catch the thief. Every inch of the lab space was being filmed. Yet still, all of the cameras had shut down in unison, as if someone had switched them off from the source—which was impossible because they had made it so a five-digit-passcode and the finger print of the Fenton family was required to turn the cameras off and on. Any footage that had been sent over to the computers they had connected the cameras to was nothing but 10 minutes of static before the lab reappeared on screen. And the tapes in the cameras themselves had mysteriously vanished, though she suspected that those would look much like the digital snow that was already stored on the computers anyway.

  
Since then she and Jack had tried a number of things to get to the bottom of their missing equipment, including—though not limited to—ecto-laser beams that filled the entire room at night, regular laser beams, a plethora of ghost containment units, traps, and weapons which activated upon detecting an ecto-signature. Yet still, nothing seemed to work. Their inventions still vanished from the lab without a trace, and Phantom still, much to their disbelief, managed to turn up using them. It was baffling.

  
After nearly a year of this nonsense, Maddie Fenton had had more than enough of it. And if discovering how all of their inventions were disappearing and ending up in Phantoms hands every other day meant that she lost a night of sleep to stake out the lab, then she was willing to do it. She hadn't told anyone in her family what she was planning, not even her sweet, darling, ghost obsessed husband. She wasn’t sure why she had made the decision to keep her plan a secret, but she had, and now that she was crouching down behind one of the filthy cluttered shelves—which Danny was suppose to have cleaned last week—she had to wonder. Not only had she kept her plans secret, but she had lied about them, telling her husband that she would be going to bed late and rising early in order to work on a new device that she was excited about. Not that she didn’t have an idea for a new advice that she was excited about of course, but it was certainly not her reason for hiding out in their lab right now. Although, considering the reasons that she was down here, perhaps she was worried that a ghost might be invisibly eavesdropping—which would certainly account for how it got past their traps and cameras, if it had known about them in advance—and she hadn’t wanted it to know her true intentions.

  
Maddie had, of course, prepared herself for any ghost that came into that lab. She had blasters, a bazooka, ecto-guns, her Bo staff, and even a Fenton Thermos. She was prepared. What ever ghost dared to enter her home while her family slept and steal their inventions would pay for it.

  
What she was not prepared for, however, was for her 14 year old son to sneak into the lab.

  
Curiously, peeking though the clutter of old broken weapons and parts on the shelf, she watched as Danny walked across the lab to the weapons vault and typed in the pass-code, placed his thumb on the finger print scanner, and opened the door. He wasted no time in searching the shelves—apparently searching for something specific. Maddie had to cover her mouth with both hands to keep from gasping at what she was seeing. Was a ghost overshadowing her son in order to gain access to their weapons vault? She was going to destroy that putrid ectoplasmic scum! How dare it touch her sweet baby boy, Danny! She would make certain that ghost regretted it’s decision before she destroyed it, and she would take great pleasure in doing so.

  
Danny exited the weapons vault, closing and locking the door behind him. He was carrying what appeared to be the Fenton Tech-Scrambler— _Guaranteed to scramble any ghost infected technology_!—and a Fenton Thermos. Her son was in the midst of muttering something about long winded introductions when he was cut off by a sudden gasp, his breath becoming visible for just a brief moment, before his shoulders dropped.

  
“Stupid ghost.” He mumbled, seemingly annoyed. “Can’t I get just one night off?”

  
Maddie immediately began wondering if he was aware he was being overshadowed, and if he was why he’d never told them, when a strange bright white ring of light appeared around his waist. She froze in place, watching is both fascination and horror as the rings of light split and traveled over the form of her son.

When the rings of light vanished, however, it was no longer her son standing there, but Phantom himself. A moment later and the ghost—and apparently her son as well—was flying through the roof above them.

  
“Daniel James Fenton,” she said sternly. “You are so going to be grounded when you get back home.”


	2. Excuses and Speculations

The first excuse was easy. He really was suppose to have cleaned those filthy shelves off a week ago. Honestly, Maddie had known that they were dirty before, but until she had spent a few hours hiding behind them on her impromptu stake out, she hadn’t realized just how dirty. Each shelf had dozens of broken inventions on them, and at least a dozen more broken and unused parts. Beyond that there were globs of green glowing ectoplasm coating each shelf almost entirely, and a thick layer of dust coating to top it off. The shelves needed to be cleaned, and Danny… well she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with him now. Not since she had found out the truth, or at least as much of it as she could get from hiding behind those filthy shelves. All she knew was that this was new territory for her. Ghost, she could handle, no problem. Raising children, she had been doing that for 17 years now, no problem. But this, this was something new and unheard of.

When she looked at what she knew about ghost and raising children, she figured she had a few options. When it came to ghost, she’d taugnt them, curse them, and then blast then to bits and dissect what was left of it. Obviously, with all things considered, that was not an option this time—unless she wanted to hurt her son in the process, which of course, she _did not_ want to do. When it came to parenting, her response was typically more situational. She would analyze the situation and act accordingly, under normal circumstances. In this particular situation, she would normally approach Danny and talk with him about everything—and logically she knew that’s what she should do, and in her heart it was what she wanted to do—but for reasons Maddie couldn’t explain, she simply could not make herself do that. So, she did the only other logical thing she could think to do, as a parent.

“What the heck do you mean I’m being grounded?” Danny asked, rather loudly. “What'd I do now?”

“Shelves.” She said simply. At his confused look she added, “In the lab. The ones you were suppose to have cleaned last week. Ringing any bells yet?”

“Oh, crud.” He said, leaning his head back before signing in defeat. “For how long?”

“One week.” She said easily. “One day for every day you didn’t clean those shelves. And I will add on another day to your grounding for each day that they continue to go uncleaned. Is that clear, mister?”

“Yeah, Mom, that’s clear.”

“Good.” Maddie smiled.

This, she knew how to do. This, she could handle.

………………………………………….

“What did your father and I tell you about your curfew being 10:00, mister?”

Her son sighed. “That 10:00 means 10:00.” He mumbled in annoyance, before perking back up. “But I was only two minutes late!”

“Then you should have left two minutes earlier. Two minutes late is still late, maybe next time you’ll remember that.” Maddie explained. “You’re grounded. One week. No phone, no TV, and no going out with friends.”

Danny glared for a moment, clearly unhappy with her decision, before accepting it with a quick “Fine.” And disappearing up the stairs—the normal way, thank heavens—and heading to his room.

She knew as she said it, as she gave him his punishment, that normally she would have been at least _a little_ more lenient since it was only by a minute or two. But what was she suppose to do? Obviously she knew the answer was to just talk to her son, but making herself admit what she now knew to herself was difficult enough, let alone out loud to him. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t know why he was late—the news had been on, she knew that there had been a ghost fight between Phantom and some ghost in a metal armored suit. Regardless, grounding him for being two minutes late was a lot easier that confronting the reason why and besides, if he was grounded from leaving the house accept for school then her son was less likely to get hurt doing something risky like what he had done tonight.

………………………………………………..

The first few excuses she’d used to ground him had made sense. She could tell herself that she was right to ground him, because she was. He had broken the rules and he had ignored his chores—she had grounded him several more times for neglecting to do his chores since the shelves incident. But even she had to question herself for this excuse.

“How was I suppose to know you’d baked those cookies for Dad’s birthday?” Danny asked incredulously. “It’s not like you told me about it! There wasn’t even a note!"

Maddie sighed getting out the bag of flour and a mixing bowl. “I still have to take the time to bake another batch though, now don’t I?"

“There’s still, like, two batches left!” He pointed put. “Isn’t that enough? It’s not like we took that many. It was a plate full, of like 10 cookies. What’s the big deal?”

“The ‘big deal’ is that your father is now short 10 cookies for his birthday. Now I have to bake another batch, which means I’ll have less time working in the lab on that new invention.”

It was a week excuse, and they both knew it.

“Two days, no going out with friends.” She said flatly. She knew he didn’t deserve to be grounded for this, but she was frightened and didn’t know what else to do. Still, even she had to admit an entire week would have been a tad bit too extreme.

“What?” he shouted. “That’s so unfair! This is stupid!”

“Just for that, I’m making it three days!” she called after him as he stomped up the stairs.

She heard him groan in frustration, and a part of her felt guilty for it. She couldn’t blame him for being annoyed, not really. And it wasn’t even his fault—not this time anyway, he had deserved the other times—it was hers, because she couldn’t make herself communicate with him that she knew, or how she was feeling. And it was an issue of trust. She’d figured that much out on her own. She trusted her son, Danny, but she could throw Phantom a lot farther than she trusted him. Making the two coincide in her mind so that she could trust them both was something that she simply did not know how to do. Simply grounding him to ensure that they both remained in the house as much as possible seemed like the easier choice.   
…………………………………...........

Danny had decided that he’d had enough of this. He got being grounded when he'd neglected his chorse, sure. He had deserved it for that. And he even understood it when he was late for curfew, even if it had only been by a minute or two. But being grounded because he and his friends had eaten some cookies? That was crazy.

“Cookies? Seriously?” Jazz asked him skeptically.

“Yes!” Danny exclaimed. “You see the crazy, too, right? Its not just me?”

His sister shook her head. “It’s not just you. It definitely sounds crazy.”

He nodded enthusiastically. “Thank you! Something weird is going on with her.”

“And whatever it is, it seems to be focused on you.” She said. “You’ve been getting grounded an awful lot lately, little brother. More so than usual.”

Danny glared. “Trust me. I know.” His expression softened. “Just… help me keep an eye on her would you? Let me know if you find anything out?”

“Of course.” Jazz agreed. “Have any theories?”

“No. Do you?”

“Maybe one.” She admitted. “But I don’t have any evidence for it yet. I’ll look into it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave some comments and kudos and let me know what you thought! I'd love to talk with you. :)


	3. Overdue Truths and Newly Formed Guilt

Maddie knew this day would come sooner or later—and logically, given their track record she knew it would likely be sooner—but she had been dreading it. Before, when encountering Phantom in the field she’d had fired at him without so much as a thought, but now that she knew the truth things simply weren’t that simple anymore. She couldn’t hurt Phantom without hurting her son, and she couldn’t not shoot at him without raising suspicion in her husband—he might be a tad bit clueless, but surely he wasn’t that dense. And even though she knew from past experience that if she fired at him he’d likely be able to dodge it easily, there was still the small chance that he’d be too distracted to see her shot coming and get hit, and she was certainly not willing to risk that happening.

  
Perhaps, this exact situation had been a part of the reason why she kept grounding him for ridiculous thing. So that she could avoid it, or at the very least prolong it. Though she supposed she had prolonged the inevitable long enough, and doing so for this long had already been pushing her luck. It looked as though she was just going to have to take a page from her husband’s book.

  
“Yeah, Maddie!” He exclaimed childishly as she fired the ecto-gun. “That’s my wife! Show that spook who’s boss!”

  
It would appear that she was right. Her lovable husband was clueless enough not to notice her wide shot, even though her aim was normally perfect. For a moment she though she could get away with just deliberately missing whenever she encountered the ghost boy in the field, until she caught sight of the look on Phantom's face.

  
Despite what his friends called him when they joked around, he was not entirely clueless.

  
He paused in the ghost fight, just long enough to put his focus on her, eyes wide and a confused expression and a questioning look on his face. She’d barely seen it before his focus was pulled back to the ghost he was fighting—the metal ghost again, Skulker, she’d heard Phantom call him—as a net was fired in his direction and he was forced to dodge. The net continued soaring in the path it had been aimed for, which was rather unfortunate for Jack as he ended up being the one tangled in it.

  
Maddie immediately holstered her weapon and moved to assist in untangling her husband, having to fight back a laugh as she did it. A quick glance up at the sky and she saw a startled and slightly apologetic look cross Phantom's features—one she had seen many times on Danny’s face in the past year—before he too had to cover his mouth in order to hold back a laugh.

  
And just like that, Phantom and Danny were no longer two separate beings, but one singular person whom she loved with all her heart.

  
…………………………………

  
She wasn’t quite sure what to make of her encounter with her daughter. When Jazz first approached her, she seemed a bit hesitant. Maddie, knowing her daughter’s hesitation and general dislike of ghost, assumed that it had to do with the fact that they were downstairs in the lab surrounded by ghost equipment. But it soon became clear to Maddie that Jazz's reasons were quite different.

  
“Hey, Mom. What are you working on?”

  
Maddie smiled up at her daughter. “Oh, you know, sweetie. Just the usual tweeking of the ghost equipment.” She said casually, brushing off what she was really doing.

  
“Oh?” Jazz asked skeptically. “And um… does the ‘usual tweeking' of the equipment always involve pulling up Phantom's unique ecto-signature on the labs computer?”

  
That made Maddie pause, for a couple of reasons. The first being that the computer screen said nothing about the ecto-signature on display belonging to Phantom, so how could Jazz possibly have known whose ecto-signature it was unless… Did Jazz know about Danny too? The thought that both of her children had been lying to her for a little over a year hurt her a great deal more than she cared to admit, especially when given the reason why they had been lying. But all things considered, she couldn’t really blame them for it either.

  
Her second reason for pausing was simply that she hadn’t been expecting to have Jazz question her like that, let alone with such a valid question. She really had no response to that, but it took her only a moment to find one.

  
“I was just reviewing all of our ghost files. I stopped on Phantom, and must have forgotten to switch it off before I started on my next project.”

  
Her daughter arched both brows up, clearly not buying a second of it. “Mhm.” She said. “Well, that ghost fight earlier today was something, hu? You know, it’s funny though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you miss like that before.”

  
Wow. Jazz was good, Maddie would give her that. Her daughter really had her on the hot seat right now. And any doubt that she had about Jazz knowing about Danny was rapidly being squashed. “There was a glare from the sun on that other hunter ghost's armor.” She answered easily enough. “It made it rather hard to aim properly.”

  
“I guess that makes sense.” Jazz said, though that look of disbelief was still subtly present on her face. “Well, anyway, it’s getting late, and we were wondering what you had planned for dinner tonight?”

  
“Oh! Of course!” She exclaimed, taking a quick glance at the clock, momentarily distracted from Jazz' line of questioning by planning a quick dinner. Her daughter really was good at this. “Spaghetti and meatballs. I’ll be up to start in a minute, sweetie. Just let me clean up this mess I made really quick okay?”

  
“Sure, Mom.”

  
Out of the coroner of her eyes, Maddie saw Jazz snatching one of the Fenton Lipstick Blasters from the pile of gear that had already been modified. And all of her doubt about her daughter being in on Danny’s secret completely vanished. Jazz definitely knew. And that hurt, that her children didn’t trust her. She knew that was another reason discovering the truth about Danny was so hard for her to take. That her son had never told her, never trusted her enough to tell her this. And considering what he was and her profession, she couldn’t blame him, really. But regardless, it hurt, knowing that her son was afraid of her and couldn’t place his trust in her.

  
……………………………………

  
Jazz plopped down onto her younger brothers bed with a sigh. “Danny, I’m not exactly sure how to tell you this but… I think Mom knows.”

  
Danny, who had been lounging on his mattress with his legs propped up against his head board, shot straight up like a rocket.

“What do you mean ‘Mom knows?’” he asked.

  
Great. He was panicking already. She could see this was going to go over well. “I mean, I can’t say for sure, but if you asked me to put money down on it, I’d say that the probability was high enough that I'd feel safe taking the risk.”

  
“What does Mom know, Jazz?” he was clearly freaked. She didn’t need her psychology books to tell her that. Heck, even her dad would have been able to see how freaked he was, and her dad was a clueless wonder.

  
“She means that she knows, dude.” Tucker piped in from his seat in Danny’s desk chair. “As in, she knows about you being Phantom.”

  
“How did she find out?” Danny said. Well, shouted was probably a more accurate description of his current vocal volume. “And how did you find out that she knows—”

  
“Shh!” Jazz said, effectively silencing her little brother. “Jeez, Danny. Could you be anymore obvious?”

  
“Sorry.” He responded at a much more reasonable volume. “So how do we know that she knows?”

  
“Well for starters, all of the grounding you for stupid things that she’s been doing set off some major alarm bells.”

  
“Yeah.” Tucker agreed helpfully. “Like that thing with the cookies. That was weird.”

  
“Exactly.” Jazz continued. “But then yesterday, in that fight between you and Skulker, she took a shot and she missed—”

  
“By a mile.” Tucker, interrupted. Again. She supposed that he was just eager for his part of the explaining process.

  
“And so when I asked her about it last night she said that the sun glare on his armor made it hard for her to aim right. Which is believable, to a certain degree. Okay, so I could have bought that. But when I asked her what she was doing in the lab, she told me she was just making the ‘usual tweeks.' Accept the last time I checked, basic updates on the tech didn’t require you to have Phantom’s ecto-signature pulled up on the computer.”

  
Jazz gave Tucker a smile and pointed in his direction, cuing him to pick up where she’d left off. Which of course he did very eagerly.

  
“So after your mom gave her some excuse about forgetting to shut the computer off, Jazz snatched a Fenton Lipstick Blasters outta the finished ‘tweeking' pile and gave it to me to check out.” He said grinning. “Turns out that she ‘tweeked' the thing into no longer recognizing your ecto-signature as a threat or target. My guess is she was doing the same thing to all of the other weapons too.”

  
Danny, for his part, was looking rather pale, as if he were about to faint. Jazz gave him a sympathetic smile, and ruffled up his hair, knowing the gesture would aggravate him and hoping to ease some of the tension. She was right, of course.

  
“Jazz!” He yelled in annoyance. But when he caught sight of her knowing smile, he just shook his head and laughed. “Weirdo.”

  
………………………………………….

  
Okay, that was it! Danny had had it with this craziness! Grounding him from hanging out with his friends was one thing, but come on. He was using the library for a study session with his friends and Jazz as an excuse. And it was exactly that, an excuse. He knew it, and he was sure his mother knew it too, but still. He didn’t think it would be possible for her to come up with an excuse of her own to say no to a study session. But shockingly, and obnoxiously, she did.

  
“You know very well that you’re grounded, mister.” His mom had her arms folded and her hip cocked out as she fixed her gaze on him. “There is no reason why you can’t just study here in your room with your sister. I’m sure your friends can survive studying without you just this once.”

  
“It’s actually a group project Mrs. Fenton.” Sam said, quickly jumping in to help. “We really can’t work on it with out having the whole group.”

  
“Yeah!” Tucker added, trying to make the excuse more believable. “We’ve gotta do this research project on, um, ocean terrain! Yeah, and we gotta map out the sea floor for the section we were assigned. And Danny was gonna be out drawler.”

  
“And I was going to go to the library and study anyway, so I figured I could sit with them and lend a hand if they needed one. And to keep an eye on Danny and make sure he actually studies.” Jazz said confidently, easily.

  
The four of them nodded enthusiastically, and Maddie paused, seeming to consider their excuse before her posture relaxed in defeat. There was no excuse she could come up with to use that would justify her still refusing, and they all knew it.

She was just about to concede when Jack came bounding up the stair, yelling “Ghost!” at the top of his lungs. “Big, green, viney ghost!”

  
“No.” Maddie said firmly, quickly resuming her previous posture and making her decision. “There is a ghost attack, and nobody is leaving this house accept for your father and I. It’s not safe for you kids to be out there. You could get hurt. I won’t allow it.”

  
“Okay, you know what?” Danny said, rather loud. “I’ve had enough of this! I’m done!”

  
“Done with what, Danno?” Jack asked. “We’re just trying to keep you kids safe.”

  
“And I’m trying to do the same thing!” Danny shouted back.

  
Sam and Tucker looked at each other, catching on to where this conversation was going and not liking the direction of it at all. Jazz, picking up on the direction as well stepped in. “Um, Danny, I don’t think—”

  
“Why not?” He cut in. “It’s not like Mom doesn’t already know anyway.”

  
Jack, for his part, was looking both confused and a bit hurt. “What does your Mom know that I don’t know?”

  
“Look, Dad said it was a 'big, green, viney ghost,’ and that translates to Undergrowth. And no offense to you guys, but you’re ecto-guns and anti-ghost weapons aren’t gonna do anything to him. And I’m not gonna just sit here and let him hurt anybody. So since I’m pretty sure Dad is the only person in this room who doesn’t already know...”

  
Danny paused, giving a pointed look at his mom, who was staring at him looking both surprised and guilty, before transforming into his ghost form. “…I’ll explain everything when I get back. To both of you. I promise.” He finished, before going invisible and intangible and flying outside through the wall.

  
For a moment, nobody said anything, the remaining people in the room could only stare at each other in awkward silence, until finally, Tucker broke it. 

  
“Well, I guess the half-ghost is outta the bag then?” he said, and Sam jammed an elbow into his side. “Ow! Yeah, I know, probably too soon for puns right?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm planning one more short chapter to act as an epilogue. 
> 
> Please leave some comments and kudos! I'd love to talk with you!


	4. Confessions (Epilogue)

It had taken Danny hardly 30 minutes to defeat that plant ghost—Undergrowth—and return home to explain everything to Jack and herself. “Plants freeze up in cold weather.” He’d told her when she asked him how he’d managed to do it so quickly, and with barely a scratch on him. “You ice a ghost plant enough times, he’ll start falling apart too. After that I just had to cram him in the thermos.”

  
Maddie had made a mental note to create some type of freeze-ray to use after hearing that, should she ever have to face that particular ghost in the future.

  
Poor Jack, who had been the last find out about Danny, had spent a good part of that half hour muttering incoherently, trying his hardest to make sense of what he had just seen—and, Maddie suspected, find a way to coincide the two halves of their son in his own mind, just as she had been doing for the past two months. Jazz had done her best to try and calm her father down, while Sam and Tucker kept reassuring Maddie that Danny knew what he was doing—she had started pacing nervously not long after he left. In the end, neither parent was able to calm down again until their son returned, immediately transforming back into his human form before becoming visible again—which she suspected was more to make them feel more comfortable than anything else.

  
“Hey.” He said softly, his hand reaching to run the back of his neck. He was clearly nervous. “So… I guess you guys know now. You probably have a lot of questions huh?”

  
Maddie, who had been afraid he might get hurt out there fighting that ghost and wallowing in her guilt and self pity about how she had been handling everything—especially seeing how frightened he was now—let her maternal side take over. Before Danny even knew what was happening, she had him enveloped in a tight embrace, holding him close to her. She felt him tense up, and he jerked a bit in surprise, but after a moment or two he relaxed and returned the embrace.

  
“Well, I have a lot of questions, starting with the obvious: ‘How?’” she began, leaning back to look her son in the eye, keeping both hands placed on his shoulders. “But the first, and most important thing that I need to know is: Are you okay?”

  
Her son looked up at her with his big blue eyes that were so much like his father’s and gave her a lop-sided grin. “Yeah, Mom, I’m okay.”

  
She nodded, giving him a soft smile of her own. “Okay, good.”

  
“And, the how question?” Jack piped in from behind them. She could hear in his voice that he was still uncertain about the entire situation.

  
Danny sighed, looking towards his father. “The Fenton Portal.” He said, “You guys kinda built the ‘On/Off' switch inside of the portal.”

  
And with that declaration, he went into explain what had happened in full detail—with the exception of the brief few moments when he was in the portal, much to Maddie’s relief considering the minimal details of “A lot of green light and a lot of pain.” that he did give them.

He did explain how frightened he had been when he’d first woken up after the accident and seen himself, how he had promptly passed out from the shock of it. How he’d had to think of a quick excuse when Jack and herself came downstairs to see what the comotion was about. How he’d had a panic attack about what had happened the second they’d gone back up stairs. How Sam and Tucker had been there to help and support him since day one, and Jazz too once she found out, and how grateful he was for them. Jack had asked how Jazz had found out, which lead to Danny telling them the story of Penelope Spectra, and how Jazz had noticed his strange behavior and followed him into an alley where she first saw him transform.

  
“Not that she told me she knew for another six months though.” He complained, before looking at Maddie. “Like mother, like daughter.”

  
Maddie smiled sheepishly, an expression she saw Jazz mirror out of the coroner of her eyes. Perhaps Danny had a point about how similar they were. Not that she minded of course, Maddie was proud of that fact.

  
Jack, was the one who seemed to have the most questions, and Maddie was content to just sit back and listen to her son explain. It was after a little over an hour of this that Maddie decided he’d explained enough for the day, and that the four of them should just spend the evening together and relax. Not needing to help Danny explain anymore, Sam and Tucker said their goodbyes and went home, promising to call the next day. Maddie called the local pizza place and ordered three large pizzas—one meats, one veggie, and one cheese, because they all had different preferences—while Jazz and Danny picked out a couple of movies.

  
Which was how they ended up here. Jack sprawled out on the recliner, head tilted back and mouth open, drooling and snoring loudly. Jazz tucked away in her room, being the only one in the family with enough sense to head to bed when she was too tired to hold her eyes open any longer. And Maddie, sitting in the couch fighting sleep, not wanting to disturb her sleeping son besides her. Danny had drifted off during the movie about an hour ago, and his head had dropped to one side to rest against her. It was so much like when he was a little boy that she couldn’t bring herself to disturb him. She could sleep on the couch for just one night, she decided as she heard her son sigh in his sleep.

  
He might have grown up a lot in this past year, but one thing was for certain. He was still her same little boy, and she loved him beyond words, whichever form he took.

**The End!**


End file.
